National Mag Award Nominees Announced

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has announced the finalists for the 45th annual National Magazine Awards. As in years past, National Geographic received nominations in all three of the photography categories. 

Here are the finalists in the photography and design categories.

Photography, Print

Honors the effectiveness of photography, photojournalism and photo-illustration in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.

GQ; National Geographic; The New York Times Magazine; Vanity Fair; Vogue

Photojournalism

Recognizes the informative photographic documentation of an event or subject.

Foreign Policy; National Geographic (2 nominations); New York; Virginia Quarterly Review

Photo Portfolio

Honors creative photography and photo illustration, including portraiture.

National Geographic; New York; The New Yorker; Out; W

Design, Print

Honors the effectiveness of design, typography and artwork in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.

Esquire; GQ; Martha Stewart Living; New York; Wired

The full list of awards nominees, including finalists for the General Excellence awards, can be found on the ASME web site, www.magazine.org. 

Photog Louie Psihoyos Wins Oscar

Photojournalist Louie Psihoyos' documentary "The Cove" was awarded the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary on March 7. Psihoyos directed the film, which documents the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. In accepting the award at the Oscar ceremony on behalf of the film's creators, co-producer Fisher Stevens thanked Psihoyos as "the man who came with the idea" for the film. 

"The Cove" is Psihoyos' first film. Based  in Colorado, he has worked on photo assignments for National Geographic, Fortune, Smithsonian and other publications, and been honored by World Press Photo and the National Press Photographers Association. 

The Curator Gallery Winners at MILK Studios

Submit your images PDN's The Curator—the search for fine art photography projects. One artist in each category will be awarded participation in an exclusive gallery show held at MILK Gallery in New York City during the summer of 2010. 

In addition, the selected artists will be featured in a print gallery in PDN's June issue - which has an additional print distribution to photography industry creatives - and their images will also be reproduced in a PDN Web gallery. The winner of each category will receive a Moab Chinle portfolio, and a free print from SeenBy, either mounted with their frameless display technology with aluminum dibond or printed on a stretch canvas up to a size of 40" x 60". One artist will be awarded a free Seenby print (up to 48" 72") mounted on aluminum dibond with acrylic finishing. Enter Today!

The deadline is March 8. (Or you can pay an additional $10 fee per image or series to enter the contest until the extended deadline of March 22.) You'll find all the contest rules, categories, prizes and image upload instructions here.

Yet Another Photo Doctoring Scandal

Add this one to the long list of scandals involving altered news photos: World Press Photo disqualified the third prize winner of the contest's Sports Features category for removing an extraneous foot from an image.

Stepan Rudik's story about street fighting in Kiev, Ukraine included a close-up image of someone's hand being bandaged (first image shown here). Removed from the original image (second image shown) was a small, blurry white sneaker that belonged to a person standing in the background.

WPP organizers said on their Web site that after the contest results were announced, it came to their attention "that Rudik's story had violated a contest rule. After requesting RAW-files of the series from him, it became clear that an element had been removed from one of the original photographs."

Bill Frakes, a WPP juror, explained to PDN: "The jury felt that this was not acceptable.  Not in line with industry standards which is the test."

I don't argue that the profession has to draw its lines in the sand. Various bloggers have reported the controversy, and Rudik has been taken to task. It's a public ritual by which examples are made of people--previously Brian Walski, Patrick Schneider, Allan Detrich, and Edgar Martins, to name several--and standards are maintained.

But I have to confess that I don't entirely understand the arbitrary rules and the lack of proportionality. It's as if littering were as bad as armed robbery, and murder OK depending upon the weapon.

In Rudik's case, for instance, he was disqualified for removing the smallest element, but I would argue that all his other manipulation to the image in question did much more to change the meaning. And it was all acceptable, apparently. He converted a color image to black and white. He blew the image up. He cropped the image. He vignetted it heavily. Burning out the sneaker in a darkroom probably would have been OK back in the day, when photographers did that all the time. But removing that sneaker in Photoshop? That was a cardinal sin, and some famous burn-and-dodgers of yore are now said to be spinning in their graves.

Related photo doctoring stories:
Brian Walski was fired by the Los Angeles Times in 2003 for altering an Iraq war photo.
Patrick Schneider was stripped of POY awards in 2003 and was fired by the Charlotte Observer after a second offense in 2006.
Allan Detrich resigned from the Toledo Blade in 2007 after he was caught doctoring numerous photos.
Edgar Martins embarrassed The New York Times last summer after it published images he had altered.

Friday Fun: First Winner Named in "Beyond the Still" Video Contest

Production company "Runner Runner" has been named the first winner in Canon and Vimeo's seven-chapter "The Story Beyond the Still" video contest.

Runner Runner, a Minneapolis-based collaborative duo comprised of Josh Thacker (Director/Creative) and Brian Slater (Editor/Creative), produced a short movie entitled "Job Security" that won the second chapter segment of the contest. With the victory, Runner Runner will get a choice of a Canon 7D or 5D Mark II; a Canon lens; and a chance to work with photographer Vincent Laforet on a film later this year.

Runner Runner's film is actually a continuation of the movie Laforet created to launch the contest last month. As part of the contest rules, the duo used the final image in Laforet's film -- a locked trunk -- to start its movie.

To be honest, when we first heard about this contest, it sounded a little gimmicky but we're really impressed with Runner Runner's entry (below) and the work of all the finalists.

Submissions for Chapter 3 of "The Story Beyond the Still Video" contest are now being accepted through March 22, 2010. For rules and submission instructions, click here.

Job Security from Runner Runner on Vimeo.

William Eggleston to Judge CDS/Honickman First Book Prize

Photographer William Eggleston has been selected to judge the 2010 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition. 

  

The competition, sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and The Honickman Foundation, is open to American photographers who have never published a book-length work and “who use their cameras for creative exploration.”  Submissions are reviewed by a panel of editors and photographers, then one judge selects the prize winner from among 12 to 25 finalists. Since its inauguration five years ago, the prize has been judged by photographers Robert Adams, Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Frank and curator Maria Morris Hamburg.  

  

Eggleston, a pioneer in color photography and a colorful character in his own right, has published several award-winning books, including William Eggleston’s Guide (1976), The Democratic Forest (1989; co-authored with Eudora Welty) and Los Alamos (2003).

  

 Submissions for the 2010 competition will be accepted from June 15 to September 8.  The winner will be announced in January 2011. 

  

More information about the prize and submission guidelines can be found on the guidelines section of the CDS.aas.duke.edu web site.

2009 Critical Mass Book Award Winners Announced

Yesterday Photolucida announced Alejandro Cartagena and Birthe Piontek as the winners of the 2009 Critical Mass Book Award competition. Pointek’s winning series, “The Idea of North,” is the result of a three month trip to a small Yukon town in 2008. Cartagena’s “Fragmented Cities: Suburbia Mexicana” considers the complexities of suburban sprawl around the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Mexico.

Photolucida will publish monographs for both Cartagena and Piontek in the coming year. The two projects were selected by a jury of more than 200 reviewers.

Photolucida also posted portfolios of the 2009 Top 50 photographers, whose work received the highest ratings by the reviewers. The Top 50 will show their work in an exhibition at the Photographic Center Northwest, which opens March 5th.

For more on this year’s Critical Mass winners visit the Photolucida Web site.

Prestigious Wildlife Photography Competition Sullied By Staged Image

José Luis Rodriguez's image has been dubbed the "Loan Wolf" by The Guardian.

The winner of the British Natural History Museum’s wildlife photographer of the year award was stripped of his £10,000 prize after questions arose about his winning image. According to reports in the British press, José Luis Rodriguez’s photograph of a rare Iberian wolf jumping a wooden gate at night came under question when photographers recognized that Rodriguez’s subject is a tame wolf named Ossian from Madrid’s Cañada Real wildlife park.

"I remember thinking, my God, this really is a wild wolf, what an achievement," Mark Carwardine, chairman of the judging panel told The Guardian. "I don't understand the mentality at all. People feel very disappointed with the photographer."

The contest organizers say Rodriguez continues to claim the image was the result of months of work studying the wolf’s behavior, but nobody is buying it.

Although the photographer has been stripped of his title and prize, books featuring his work alongside that of the other competition entrants have already been published by the BBC, which leaves a lasting reminder of the deceit, another in a growing list of transgressions by photographers which undermine an already shaky public trust of photographs.

Call for Entries: National Geographic Photography Grant

National Geographic is now accepting applications for its fourth annual Photography Grant, a $30,000 grant that will be awarded in early June to support the documentary work of one photographer. The deadline for applications is March 1.

There have been two notable changes in this year's competition, says Beth Foster, Director of Communications for National Geographic magazine. The first is the reduction in the size of the grant, which was $50,000 in previous years. "These are challenging economic times, but we're committed to the grant and want to continue to support the photographic community this way," she says.

The other significant change is that National Geographic intends to award the grant to a project that "reflects our mission to inspire people to care about the planet," Foster says. In past years, the grant was open to a broader ranger of documentary subjects.

Previous Photography Grant recipients include Alessandra Sanguinetti, Jonas Bendiksen and Eugene Richards.

Details about the grant and application process are available here.

Call for Entries: PDN's 2010 Cramped But Cool Studio Showcase

PDN's Cramped But Cool Studio Showcase returns this month by popular demand. If you think your office is space-challenged yet stylish, convenient or workable, we want to see it! We'll post images of selected submissions on this blog (PDNPulse.com) from now until the week of February 15, when we let readers vote on the best submission. The photographer with the winning workspace will be featured on our Web site --and receive a $50 gift certificate from a photo retailer.

If you'd like us to consider your workspace for the showcase, please submit 1 to 3 jpeg images to: editor@pdnonline.com. Include a short description (up to 100 words) of your workspace, what you've got stored there, how many other people use the space (including kids, pets, etc), and what you like or dislike about working there. Be sure to put "Cramped Can Be Cool" in your subject line.

Meanwhile, in case you missed last year's showcase, here are links to the featured submissions:
Cramped But Cool Studio: Tom Zinn's Backyard Office Wins
Cramped But Cool Studio: Backyard Office Near Austin
Cramped But Cool Studio: Rent Controlled in Midtown Manhattan
Cramped But Cool Studio: An Office in a Closet
Cramped But Cool Studio: DIY Remodel in Portland
Cramped But Cool Studio Showcase: A Los Gatos Home Office